[Arc 3!] - Episode 8.1 - Aftermath - Part 1/2

Episode 8 - Expanding Horizons
Ko is a badass. Middling in height, light, fit and a real looker. She's smart and strong and likes felines. But she isn't a cat girl badass; those ears and tails are just emotes, dress-up items. At least that was the case.

The blood pact Ko asked for and Lila eventually relented to, was a secretive affair for me. In the video game Lila is from, there was a cut scene for it, but it was vague as to be interchangeable depending on which NPC you had chosen - that said, plenty of lore was included about it, and in Escape, lore seems to become reality.

If I didn't know better, I'd say it involved losing and then reattaching a limb, haha... But seriously, a whole lot of pain and magic, oh and a literal blood transfusion of all things - Lila gave Ko a quantity of her blood, as I understand it. All done behind closed doors, Eshu was allowed to help, but no boys allowed.
    The result is that Ko is now a genuine, certifiable, authentic, cat girl badass.

Before the procedure, Lila explained the likelihood of each outcome. A ninety-five per cent chance of becoming a half-blooded demon, and a seventy per cent likelihood of being the same type of demon as the blood giver; Imp in this case.
    Well, you can guess, can't you? Ko went and broke the box on both fronts, being in the five and thirty per cent boxes. Lila says she’s never even heard of someone not only being compatible for the ceremony in the first place, never mind being in both the lesser camps at once.

So instead of becoming a half-demon, half-human, Ko is now a full blooded demon - and her species? Nekomato, a Tier two, twin-tailed cat-spirit-demon, taken very roughly from Japanese folklore.
    Apparently, it does have a fair amount of compatibility with Imp, specialising in illusion magics, transformations, tricks - with the added bonus of self-buffing abilities - it's a serious power up on plain old human.

Her level was reset to zero, but her stats hold over. In essence, Ko is really friggin strong now! No more emotes either, she really has two tails and ears now, and can see better in the dark. She was always oddly good at crazy athletics, so I guess that at least hasn’t changed much. I've never quite understood that to be honest. Surely to move like a cat, you'd have to sort of unlearn how to move your legs like a human, and how would you even do that?
    That aside, it’s quite the transformation. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I have some reservations, I mean, it was a one-way operation - Ko has permanently changed her body, her species, to something that doesn’t even exist back in the old world. My thoughts on it are a bit mixed. That said, I’ve been quite busy myself.

That wasn’t the only event of the last two weeks, you see, not even by half. The villagers we did manage to rescue, or rather that Lila did by saving us, numbered nearly one thousand. Their town was intact enough to rebuild in time, but they were injured, traumatised and exhausted.

Past that, Lila admitted that leaving the NPCs south of us alone had been a mistake on her part - effectively having a base and workforce for any invader to avail of. So she decided to move the residents. 

Step outside our fort now, and it’s quite a new sight. The tower still stands atop the hill, but in a long line out from it are the anti-raidition windmills. Lila used a spell that emulates radiation to test them, and they really work. How, I can't possibly imagine, but with them we've created a line, an invisible wall between us and anything blowing down from the wastelands up north.

Dug into the hill lie the Esltopfo warrens. Once the order was given, Major Tom's people were exceedingly fast at work. Their buildings aren't the lap of luxury per se, but the little fella's seem exceptionally pleased. Built into the slope, doors I'd have to crawl through, little windows, roofs of dirt and exterior walls of piled stone. They're cute if simple.
    A more cynical view of them would be that, to get to the fort, one doesn't just have to get through the barrier, but also walk the paths in between the houses of Lila's most ardent defenders. I wouldn't want to be that invader, haha.

Further out on the plains is our new town. For now, it's somewhat simple, rows of sturdy timber frame and wooden plank abodes, bare dirt tracks running between them. Thankfully, Escape's inclement weather is not like that of certain city builder games - these basic buildings should be safe from any freak tornadoes.
    The Estlopfo joined forces with the villagers to get housing set up quickly. I helped too, given I was barred from involvement in Ko's blood-pact ceremony..

There was, and still are, a lot of logistics to taking in a couple of hundred people. The Estlopfo graze grass, but that’s it; they don't drink or generate waste or much of any human complexity. The villagers are obstinately human; they need clean water, waste facilities, farms for food and much more.

Surprisingly, Lila gave me quite a lot of the menu to use in helping out - access to things like temporary objects, supplies we couldn't get on short notice and so on - I spent most of the last fortnight being a town planner of all things.

That hasn't helped completely distract me from feeling a bit distant with Ko in her new role, but I'm happy for her. She seems really pleased to be Lila's blood sister, the second member of Clan Rowan. Well, I might just be their mutt, but I can live with that. I'm not as strong as them and my personality is rotten, but I sure can bark loud, haha…

Anyway, the villagers filled us in on the town's fate prior to our arrival. Despite only having a couple of guardsmen, they put up quite a fight. Farmers, labourers and lumberjacks stood firm against the invading men of metal. It was such a battle that a couple of hundred people actually managed to escape the town in the ensuing chaos, fleeing further south to other smaller villages and hamlets.

We don't have anything as useful as a census, unfortunately, as all the elders, the mayor and his staff died in one way or another. We've estimated around two thousand people were living in the town originally; almost half seem to have died... A large number in the initial fighting. Many in those few gruesome hours worked so hard in utterly unsafe conditions that they collapsed dead. But the most of all were killed for power.

Disconnected from their homeland, the drones were running pretty low on energy. They decided to use the biomass converters on hundreds to create a long-lasting stockpile almost immediately after gaining control over the town. Anyone too old, too feeble, too sick or too young to work was culled. To put it simply, the ratio of villagers we have here ranges from, at best, young teenagers, up to late middle-aged people. One side effect of this is the total loss of elders. The mayor also died, and many other administrative types fought in the initial skirmish. The town secretary was one of the three bodies hanging in the square...

Everyone here is happy to have survived - people are exceedingly grateful to Lila and even to us, and I get it, I do - but I can't help thinking that nearly a thousand people didn't need to die.
Lila could have saved them all. Had she been less cautious when the drones first arrived, or had she taken the villagers in weeks ago, before the barriers of the world fell even.
    It’s not like they bring with them no benefits: Every resident in the fort’s domain increases the menu currency we have on hand. Moreover, the villagers are setting up farms and the like. They are a genuine, hardy, rural workforce, even after everything that's happened to them. Did all that crazy shit need to be inflicted upon them?

Like I said, it's been a hectic couple of weeks. I'd like to follow all this up with some piffy remark about now, 'past all this exposition, Eshu is feeling much better!' but that would be a lie.

Some rest did help her past the initial breakdown, but our magenta-haired wonder has not been herself at all. Meek and reserved, she's like a different person. Lila had her act as the blood ceremonies 'shrine-maiden' and has been teaching her and Ko lots more about magic, in an effort to keep her busy at least, but we're no closer to understanding what's eating at her.

We decided a trip through the village might be a good idea; let our girl see how many people we saved, who are living happily again and rebuilding their lives. Of course, this could go wrong and just trigger more pain in her, and so, I volunteered to take her alone. After all, I am a big, insensitive man, right? If it does upset her, she can then go be comforted by the 'innocent' women in her life, and we can start thinking up our next strategy. Still, I’m hopeful this could help ease her mind.

Seriously, she just doesn't seem herself. She's wearing a shirt with sleeves that go past her belly button! A long skirt and a jacket of mine. She walks hunched in on herself quietly next to me, small hand in mine. No perverted jokes, no bubbly cheerleader, a quiet girl, nothing like our usual Eshu. It’s been like this long enough that I'm starting to really worry about it.

"Here we are," I declare, coming to a stop in front of one of the more substantial houses of our new settlement. A stone base foundation marks it as a more sturdy construction, and the veranda with smoking pit gives away its purpose - our very own forge! Every fort should have one.

"My favourite villager lives here," I tell Eshu, looking at her face in hopes of some reaction.

"Pah, you're what," rumbles a voice inside. A giant of a man comes out to greet us. Bushy white beard and eyebrows, rippling muscles in a constant war with the wrinkles of old age. The retired blacksmith of a rural NPC town, the developers bequeathed him with perhaps the most default of names for his occupation - before us stands, the mighty Flint!